The release date for the English version of 'South of Broad' by
Pat Conroy is Aug 2009. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
The one and only Pat Conroy is back, this time with a large, sweeping book that is a tribute to both Charleston and enduring friendship.
A distinctive ensemble of sinners and saints is brought together in South of Broad against the opulent background of Charleston, South Carolina. Our narrator, Leopold Bloom King, teaches physics at the nearby high school and is the son of a kind and caring father. His mother, a former nun, is a renowned Joyce scholar and the head of the high school. Leo's elder brother kills himself at the age of thirteen, leaving the family reeling from the devastating loss as the lonely and destitute Leo looks for anything to keep him going. In due course, he discovers the solution when he joins a close-knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, the glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a father who escaped from prison; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-expanding circle whose relationships will reverberate across two decades, from the 1960s counterculture to the 1980s AIDS crisis.
Their relationships have withstood the test of time, enduring both happy and unhappy marriages, unfulfilled desires and unsaid longings, arduous endeavors and tragic collapses, and Charleston's egregious history of racism and class distinctions. However, none is ready for the ultimate test of friendship that leads them to San Francisco. Pat Conroy at his best may be found in South of Broad, a long-awaited book from a legendary American author whose love of language and life has no limits.